Blog 3 - "What is Logic Youth?"

"What is Logic Youth?" is the name of Jared Bell's composition for the final assignment for Music 295a this past fall. Jared is a good friend of mine and the reason I'm taking this class. As I was busily slapping together papers towards the end of this past November he would talk non-stop about the progress of his final project for an electronic music class. He rambled about all the hours he spent searching for beats to sample and playing around on the MIDI keyboards in Phelps Hall. He even went as far as to say that MUSIC 295 had become hands-down his favourite class at Yale.

I decided to join him one evening in the music lab. This was partly out of curiousity and partly because I thought that devoting a bit of my time to listen to his work would stop him from raving on about how much fun he was having with his final assignment as I wrote a final paper on a painfully dull topic. Whatever my motives were, I'm glad I popped in to get a taste of what this class was all about. Although I couldn't offer any technical suggestions I'd offer my two cents on different tracks he had in the works. Before long I even found myself sitting down at another computer playing around with the Logic Pro software.

The decision to take this class was an easy one and I can only hope I have as much fun and get as much out of the final project as Jared Bell did...

Click here if you'd like to be directed to Jared's blog from last semester

Assignment 2

I really enjoyed working with RadiaL but I was unable to properly set up the MIDI keyboard. Instead I had to revert to assigning functions to the mac keyboard. Having the switches on the MIDI keyboard would have made fading channels in and out significantly easier. Without it I had to quickly move my mouse around and frequently had to re-record songs.

Personally, I found the biggest challenge was finding a starting point to the songs. Once I established a beginning rythym or beat it was relatively easy to add in effects and noises that meshed well. You have a listen of the finished products in mp3 format by clicking the links below:

Loop 1:

Loop 2:

Loop 3:

Blog 2 - Ratatat

As I mentioned in Blog 1, I have a couple friends to thank for continually exposing me to electronic music I would not have listened to on my own. Recently, they've got me hooked on the group Ratatat. The group only has two members with Mike Stroud on guitar and Evan Mast on the synthesizer. They have a very original sound that I would categorize as house music. They've released three albums but admittedly I haven't listened to much of their most recent album that hit the shelves this past summer. At the moment I find the song "Lex" to be their best single.

I'd love to see these guys perform in person. Unfortunately it looks as though their world tour has finished all of their stops in the U.S. Maybe someone on the student council can coerce them into coming back to the States for Spring Fling...

I can say with certainty that after listening to these guys I'll be looking to find some more house music that appeals to me. If any of you readers have any suggestions be sure to send them my way.

Assignment 1

I just completed our first assignment of creating two ringtones. I recorded sounds of me walking through the snow, walking up stairs, using my ID card and punching numbers into my cell phone. I was very impressed with the sound quality that I got using the mic I rented from the music lab.

Ringtone 1 was just a 15 second sample that was not edited. Ringtone 2 was created using the following editing techniques: fade in, fade out, gain control, invert, reverse and tempo adjustment. To be honest, the assignment took a lot longer to complete than I expected. However, I do feel much more comfortable with the Logic Pro software.

Ringtone 1:

Ringtone 2: